Once in a while, a small story captures a piece of the contemporary cultural zeitgeist in which our hyper emotions about animals reaches the point of neurotic behavior. I think this case of a woman trying to save ducks on a freeway, qualifies. From the Everett Herald story:
Traffic tangled on southbound I-5 in Lynnwood on Tuesday night after a woman got out of her car to try to save some ducks in the freeway. Around 7:15 p.m., the woman was southbound on the highway just south of 44th Avenue W, said Trooper Keith Leary with the Washington State Patrol. There was a duck and ducklings in the freeway. She pulled onto the shoulder, got out of the car and tried to corral the ducks, Leary said. She also tried to stop traffic. A semitruck that was headed toward the woman avoided her but hit her car, jackknifed and hit another vehicle. The crash slowed traffic for hours. No injuries were reported. Two ducks did, however, die. People were lucky there weren’t worse impacts to human life, Leary said.
Good grief. Do that for a child, absolutely! But ducks?
Bottom line: The lives of ducks are not as important as the lives of people. In this situation, as bad as one might feel about the lethal danger to the ducks, interfering with traffic on a roaring freeway to save them was reckless folly, not worth risking injury or life to oneself or others. The woman was properly arrested.
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